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Presumably the majority of clients are happy, and go back to booking.com after their first visit, thus costing $0

yes, loyalty just reduces the cost per click, but the math is the same, so they buy 100 people instead of 10 people with one reservation, but the game is the same.

EDIT: also think about how many times people book per year, maybe 4-5 times in the upper quantiles? so if booking pays 3$ for you, it will take a couple of months until your next booking so they can reinvest your 15% commission to buy other people.

A a freelance consultant, Pre COVID I was easily booking 50 times/year

hotels.com gave one free night for every 10 nights, effectively a 10% discount. Change in contracts at work means I now book with ihg with massive discounts over hotels.com rates and get the points from them instead, but before then I'd get several weekends away for free each year.

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